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Sunday October 21, 2012

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PONDER project: building brain muscle

Our brains, as much as our bodies, need exercise.

And if you build brain muscle, you protect yourself from neurodegenerative diseases - like Alzheimer's.

Jens Pruessner, the director of the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging, puts it like this: dementia is like climbing down a mountain -- it takes longer to reach the bottom if you start at 1,000 feet, than if you start at 100 feet.

To help us stay up on that mountain, the centre has launched the PONDER project with the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. We get to play games online - free brain training! - and they get to do more research.